WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Sherrill administration has spent nearly three months resisting congressional demands for answers about New Jersey’s voter registration scandal. Now Congress is done asking nicely.
On Wednesday, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ02) announced that the House Judiciary Committee and House Administration Committee have issued a subpoena to the New Jersey Department of State, demanding records concerning the improper registration of approximately 6,600 individuals who indicated they were not U.S. citizens.
Hundreds of those registrants reportedly went on to cast ballots.
The subpoena, addressed to Acting Secretary of State Shirley Emehelu, gives the administration until November 16, 2026, to produce documents concerning the registration failures, the state’s citizenship verification procedures, communications with technology vendor IDEMIA, and efforts to clean up the voter rolls.
The four-page congressional letter accompanying the subpoena offers a revealing detail: New Jersey has produced just 12 documents since lawmakers began demanding answers on August 3rd.
According to congressional investigators, those records include two electronic meeting invitations, three emails concerning vendor contracting, and a one-paragraph memorandum from Governor Mikie Sherrill directing then-Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell to address a problem that had already become public.
None, the committees contend, adequately explains how the registration failure was discovered or why affected registrations remained on the rolls until 2026.
“We have given Governor Sherrill’s administration every opportunity to provide answers, and they have failed to do so,” said Van Drew, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight.
“Thousands of people told the state they were not American citizens, yet they were registered to vote anyway. Hundreds actually voted. The state knew about this failure in 2024, and somehow these registrations remained on the rolls for nearly two years.”
The underlying problem dates to June 2023 through June 2024, during the Murphy administration, when a reported software error resulted in thousands of improper voter registrations through New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle Commission.
The Sherrill administration has subsequently disclosed additional voter registration irregularities, although officials have characterized those later discoveries as separate issues that did not involve noncitizens.
Congressional investigators say the Department of State has repeatedly invoked attorney-client, executive, deliberative-process and other privileges without adequately identifying which documents are being withheld or explaining the basis for those claims.
The committees specifically questioned why the state waited until 2026 to undertake remediation efforts despite the earlier discovery of the problem.
“If it was simply a software glitch, then show us the evidence,” Van Drew continued. “Who knew about it? Why wasn’t it fixed sooner? And what about people who may have falsely claimed to be citizens and were never independently verified?”
The subpoena carries the signatures of House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, Elections Subcommittee Chairwoman Laurel Lee, and Van Drew.
Importantly, Van Drew distinguished between the administration responsible for the original failure and the administration now responsible for answering congressional questions.
“We did not blame Governor Sherrill for a failure that began under the Murphy administration, but she is responsible for providing answers now,” he said.
The dispute now moves beyond voluntary document requests into compulsory congressional oversight, with federal lawmakers seeking records that could establish precisely when New Jersey officials learned of the registration failures, what they did in response, and why the problem persisted for so long.
The November 16th deadline will be the next test of whether Trenton turns over the requested records.
